


What Doesn't He Know

by verushka70



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Brother/Brother Incest, Brotherly Love, Character Study, Cognitive Dissonance, Compulsion, F/M, First Time, Jealous Damon Salvatore, Light Bondage, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual, Orgasm Delay/Denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 06:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13804932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verushka70/pseuds/verushka70
Summary: Katherine held her door open wide, not hiding the fact that Stefan sat on her bed, shirtless. Her grasp of Damon's forearm drew pain up from the pit of his stomach, transformed it into a flutter to his chest.But Damon let her pull him into her room and shut the door. That night, she tied them both to bedposts across from each other.





	What Doesn't He Know

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags. Canon compliant to early/mid-S3, maybe S4. 
> 
> Third person Damon POV. Present day frame for memories of the brothers' shared past with Katherine. Period-typical sexism in memories.

There’s one thing no one tells you. Not that you would listen if they did; but it probably isn’t in the top five perqs _or_ top five disadvantages of vampire life that anyone trying to convince you would mention.

Once you become a vampire, there’s no illness, no injury – unless you’re on Stefan’s bunny-and-Bambi diet – and no dementia in your future. (Barring werewolf bites.)

Which means you will remember everything better than you did as a human. And much, much longer: all your eternal life.

Vividly.

Including all the bad memories you’d rather forget, from both your human life and your vampire life.

Everything is heightened. Good memories are fantastic. Bad memories can be... paralyzing.

And you’re stuck with them. Forever. They might possibly dim (someday please). But your mind is sharp all the time. They usually don’t (ever; never).

It’s one of the reasons – besides the fact that you don’t age, which people start to notice after a while – you have to move around a lot.

It’s also one of the reasons you sometimes come back.

* * *

He remembers the first time as paradoxically innocent and naïve, given what they were doing. It started slow, exploratory, playful; became tender, loving; the frenzied crescendo was shattering. It was his first glimpse of Katherine’s promised “no rules” future.

Given what they were doing, by every standard and social more of every era through which he’s lived, it should have been sleazy, hedonistic, decadent, jail-worthy depravity; basically, pure porn.

It was anything but sleazy and smutty. It was a first time that set the bar pretty damn high for all subsequent first times. Although he’s had so many – first love, first kill, first compelled lover, first compelled kill – no first will ever be like that first.

It was the very first time with both Katherine and Stefan.

He’d like to color the memory, tint it darker, more decadent. But his memory, vampire clear, won’t let him.

It persists as perhaps his most deeply guarded memory of sweet love, wonderment and ecstasy.

He’d already been Katherine’s lover for weeks. Stefan had, too, Damon knew; he’d heard them on nights when Katherine sent him back to his own room.

He knows (knew) Stefan was compelled for certain things that particular night. He’d always assumed it was because Katherine thought Stefan – who couldn’t handle her biting and drinking him without compulsion – couldn’t handle it, would freak out.

It didn’t occur to him for more than half a century that compelling Stefan had also given him an out, too: that it might never, ever come up in conversation, because Stefan wouldn’t remember. Damon wondered if that had been part of Katherine’s purpose. Probably not. Maybe it was just a beneficial coincidence. Not that he would ask her, even if she weren’t trapped in the tomb under Fells’ Church. Not that you could believe anything she said. Not that she would ever reveal her motivations.

* * *

“Katherine never compelled me. It was real for me.” Damon said it with conviction. Not a wrinkle of doubt on his face.

But inside he still reeled from the bomb Stefan had dropped: that he, Stefan, was the last person Katherine was with that night – not Damon, as Damon had believed...

...for a hundred and forty five years.

She had been far older as a vampire than he and Stefan are, even now – centuries older. She had the strength of a daily diet of human blood. She would have been good at it.

She was.

He and Stefan had not yet learned about vervain and its uses. No doubt that was entirely on purpose – Katherine’s purpose; part of her plan. Father had not vervained Stefan –- not until the night before they were all killed (entombed) in the church. So, up until that night before the roundup, Stefan had nothing in his system to prevent Katherine's compulsion.

Neither had Damon.

* * *

After it was all over, after Emily trapped (saved) Katherine and the others, Damon left Stefan. Went off on his own. Stefan couldn’t teach him anything – he knew less than Damon; his carelessness would get them both killed; Katherine couldn’t be retrieved until the comet came back. So he left Stefan behind – stupid Stefan, trusting Father, almost getting them both killed, and Katherine rounded up with the other vampires. She’d taught Damon some things, but he knew she’d withheld much. He set about fIguring things out on his own.

Compulsion he learned before he left, though. He had to, of necessity: Stefan’s sloppy, demented recklessness. Thus began Damon’s long, successful career of snatch, eat, erase: evade detection, fly under the radar. The daylight ring helped a lot, of course.

Something about compelling others, or becoming a vampire – both probably – began to jog his memory, though. He began to remember bits and pieces of things, but with chunks of missing time. They surfaced as brief, lucid moments from a vague, foggy blank. Sometimes multiple brief memories surface that seem to be from the same event or occasion, but he can’t be sure.

Damon remembers the sick feeling when it finally hit him: if Katherine compelled me – how would I know?

And, much later: if it took Stefan this long to put some of the pieces together – how long before I remember everything?

Will I ever?

Sometimes, even now, something he’s never before recalled surfaces. With despair and a perverse nostalgia, he wonders: what else don’t I remember?

* * *

But no. Ridiculous. He remembers everything. (He must...) Every moment, every caress, every second of burning with longing, jealousy, pity, and love, watching her with Stefan, knowing Stefan watched he and Katherine.

But, no – he can’t know everything. If he knew everything, he would have known that he was not the last one she saw that night, that Stefan was.

He didn’t know that until Stefan told him. Here. Today. The 21st century.

How could he not know?

What else that he _thought_ he knew, isn’t accurate?

* * *

For the most part Damon thinks she didn’t need compulsion with him. There were myriad, non-vampiric, pleasurable ways Katherine could seduce and control him; she knew and used them all. Some were heightened by her vampirism, of course. He’d always thought they were merely intensified versions of the feminine wiles all women possess. Those were her weapons of choice, Damon thinks, whereas compulsion was a last resort. At least with him.

He thinks.

(He hopes.)

* * *

Katherine was smart. When she moved beyond mere flirtation with Damon, she made sure to always leave him wanting more than he got.

First came holding hands in the library or gazebo. Then there were stolen kisses in the shadows of the upstairs halls or in the woods – stolen only after he chased and caught her.

Formal dancing with her (very little touching below upraised arms) heightened his excitement. Sometimes at home, he whisked Katherine around a room in a rowdy servants’ jig, just to be able to press himself against her. He took liberties repeatedly. When she stopped resisting (Damon was certain that was fake and simply for reasons of propriety; she only resisted when others were around, never when alone with him) and permitted him to hold her closer during jigs, he was emboldened later to kiss her milky bosom in the shadows of the trees in the arbor or in the upstairs library, nuzzling the tops of her breasts as she pressed his face into them.

Everything was connected to everything else. Each time she granted him another new intimacy, Damon secretly exultant, determined that he would have her. Clothed caresses and kissing in the deserted library led to furtive frottage when he pinned her (when she let him) against the bookcase, and pressed his aching hardness against her. The first time, she paused briefly, lips smiling under his, and then she kissed him back as ardently as he’d been kissing her.

The next time Damon pinned her against the bookcase and pressed his hardness against her, Katherine spun them around and then pinned _him_ up against the bookcase. She kissed him so hard she left him breathless. He truly was pinned, by a strength he’d never have guessed she possessed (and didn’t know the reason for, at the time).

That was when things changed. Looking back, each stage had somehow blended naturally into the next, each increment of increased intimacy leading to another. Yet once he had made his physical desire truly known – crudely, he supposed – by pressing it against her, Katherine turned the tables on him with a delighted vengeance.

He knew he was supposed to regard a forward woman as immoral; he had a tiny instant of unreasoning fear (entirely reasonable, he later discovered) when she held him by both wrists against the wall, just before she took his mouth with her own and that instant of fear turned into arousal.

But when he next pressed against her in the library, mouths already sliding against each other’s, she turned and pinned him against the bookcase and simultaneously slid her hand over his erection. He knew it was unnatural, that he should be the aggressor. But to finally learn that it wasn’t just one-sided – him wanting and her granting – was indescribable. He had feared that her interest was feigned or fickle. _Stefan_ , his mind whispered, _She’ll choose Stefan_.

But it wasn’t Stefan she pinned against the bookcase. It wasn’t Stefan she caressed through his clothes.

As Katherine he kissed him and held him against the bookcase and stroked him through his breeches, Damon thrilled at her touch, finally assured this mad desire was mutual, was reciprocated. He yielded to her, one hand gripping her hip tight under her hoop skirt, the other clenched in a fist where she held his wrist. They kissed so feverishly their teeth knocked together; her hand moved faster and faster, pressing harder and harder.

He had a brief moment of distraction to wonder, _Has she done this before?_ before he was overcome. Then his cock jerked, again and again, and he spurted in his pants under her hard, rapid strokes. She kissed him so hard, then, that either he or she bit his tongue. He broke out in a sweat at his temples, upper lip and palms; his entire body trembled and went weak. Katherine greedily sucked the blood from his tongue, squeezing him once more, hard, through his breeches, wringing a few more shivers and hip-jerks out of him. His feeble protest was whimpered into her mouth.

And that was that.

From then on, he always stopped by her room before retiring for the night, to privately bid her a (long) good night in her room. When she was in the mood – which seemed more often than not – she let him in, pressed him down to the bed, and with each encounter she exposed more of his flesh and intimate parts. She always made sure to give Damon more than he’d gotten the last time, but not as much as he wanted. He wanted more of her flesh exposed in the lamplight, but mostly it was his.

Quite often she left him cocked like an Enfield musket ready to go off, but not allowed to. (Looking back, he supposed he was more like a Spencer repeater, cocked and ready to go, over and over – but those hadn’t quite been invented yet.) He stumbled back to his room, throbbing, stiff, his cock leaking beneath his pants, drunk on her alternating gentle caresses and fierce, demanding touch. Damon sometimes didn’t even bother undressing when he got to his room. He just shut the door, fell back against it, undid his pants with trembling hands, touched himself the way she touched him, and quickly exploded, imagining her hands on him.

As his nightly stops at her room continued, she repeatedly brought him just to the brink and then suddenly completely stopped touching him, with orders not to go over the edge. He always tried to stop the inevitable and sometimes succeeded. But Damon often couldn’t contain it and spurted hot and milky on her hand (his breeches, the bed linens, wher _ever)_. She would _tsk-tsk_ in mock disapproval at his failure to obey. But that secret smile of hers let him know she enjoyed his loss of control.

She never said she loved him.

How could she do all that and not love him?

He’d been so damned naive.

She had more in store for Damon, he was to learn.

* * *

She bound him, naked from the waist up, to the head of the bed with her extra corset strings. They were tight – wound around his arms many times. For a very brief moment he considered that perhaps this was what Gulliver had felt at the hands of the Lilliputians – without the other intimacies, of course. The corset strings bit into his arms, especially when he moved; he couldn’t stop moving, shivering under her touch. She teased him relentlessly. He was so far past fearing Father would burst through the door, he couldn’t even be bothered to listen.

Her mouth moved against his – then on his neck – and then returned to his mouth again. The long, searing kiss lingered and literally took his breath away, making it impossible for him to protest as she undid his braces and unfastened his pants.

Not that he would have.

Her mouth moved down, then, to his nipples, nibbling and sucking them while she slowly pulled his pants off. He felt both terribly shy to be naked and fully aroused in the candle light, yet also bold and oddly proud at the way his member stood at attention for her, the tip exposed from its sheath of skin, shiny and wet.

Her mouth moved down from his nipples to his navel. Her hair brushed his cock and he shivered. Katherine looked up at him with knowing eyes, and then dipped her head down to take him in her mouth.

It was agonizingly pleasurable. Bound as he was, all he could do was feel – and watch.

And explode.

* * *

From a distance, Damon hunted for them and found them walking in the arbor. She nodded while Stefan spoke, and murmured quietly when Stefan was silent. Her head cocked to the side and slightly towards her shoulder once or twice, as if listening for an eavesdropper – as if she perhaps heard someone following them. But she never turned her head, never acknowledged Damon, never moved her attention from Stefan.

The stiff, silly boy. Stefan didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted hot kisses and caresses and to touch warm, bare flesh and to caress him until he spurted – again and again. (Didn’t she?)

Damon knew this. (Didn’t he?)

Still, he could not stop the slight ache in his chest, the tiniest tremor in the hand he rested against a tree, watching them. Stefan was measured, calm – not impulsive, impetuous like Damon was.

She couldn’t want that.

Could she?

* * *

In looking back on it, Damon supposed it must have been terribly obvious to her that he was essentially a virgin. “Essentially” because his fellow infantry-men had of course dragged him to a brothel once and, another time, to the encampment of prostitutes who discreetly followed their march at the front. So technically he was not untouched.

Each time had amounted to little more than a few moments of amazing pleasure with a complete stranger who controlled the entire encounter, followed quickly by uncontrollable spasms, over almost as quickly as a coughing fit – and about as memorable. Damon had never _loved_ anyone.

It was not that he was a prude. He simply felt as much for these women as they clearly had for him: nothing. There was none of the passion or even fleeting attraction and desire he had known in pursuing the girls of Mystic Falls. He had led a sheltered life in Mystic Falls, it was true. But he had already begun to travel beyond it, to see more of the world. Enough of its meanness and ugliness and hypocrisy; enough of people’s outer conformity to values they didn’t really live.

It was all very “Do as I say, not as I do.” It was the Victorian era, after all. He was young enough to be outraged by the ease with which grown men – men he had respected, like his Father – publicly subscribed to values they privately disavowed or outright dismissed. Like all youth, his horseshit detector for his elders was exceptionally sensitive. Combined with his time in the Confederate infantry and his dawning realization of what he was _supposed_ to be fighting for, versus what they _were_ actually fighting for...

He was well on the way to the cynicism of a failed idealist (failed romantic), before he’d ever even embarked on a romance or even regular relations with a woman he actually _liked_. He had hated Mother’s subservience to Father and his father’s occasional, casual, brutal cruelty to her (and to Damon) (but never to Stefan, the youngest, the golden son who never disobeyed or argued). He hated the simpering behavior of girls his age – and the way any girl who failed to behave the same way was subtly ostracized. He hated that other boys wouldn’t rock the boat, just fell in line like their hypocrite fathers.

He could not speak with Father about it (Father: last choice out of everyone). Stefan was even younger and less experienced than he (plus considerably shyer). And his mother, to whom Damon would have turned, was dead. He had no one to really, freely talk to about what he observed, what he feared, what he wished for. He had nothing to say to his social peers, and found the pool of women from which he had to choose suffocatingly close-knit, shallow and vapid. Long before the movie ever existed, he had been Mystic Falls’ Rebel Without A Cause.

Damon supposed he was ripe for Katherine’s picking. She, in turn, was simply bewitching. Young, lithe, charming – but lively, worldly, rebellious. Like him.

Thus it was not terribly surprising – although it was a bit humiliating – that It took almost nothing for Katherine to bring Damon off. It would have been embarrassing enough to make him cringe had it not been for one saving grace: no matter how many times he convulsed in pleasure, he was ready again within minutes and his stiffness rarely, if ever, flagged. They say youth is wasted on the young – well, Damon’s was _not_. After Katherine, his youth was never wasted. Here it was, for all eternity. (Barring, like, werewolves and their bites…)

But he had been so very young. Today, they called young men of his age when he met Katherine, “boys.” But boys were so much older then, expected to be reliable, dependable, responsible. One was considered a man at that age – fully marriageable, soldier material (cannon fodder), soon to be fathers and husbands and members of the Founder’s Council.

Once Damon was hers (he never thought of Katherine as his; she never gave him that, only a sense that he was _hers_ ), Katherine drew his pleasure out for as long as possible each time, using her mouth and hands. It seemed the most shocking defilement of her beauty – and yet, strangely sacred – to watch her mouth on him, her red lips tight around his girth, sliding up and down his length, as he twisted in his bonds and writhed under her touch. She put him through it, multiple times, each time they stole away together. Each subsequent explosion took a little longer to achieve, though.

In the daytime, she coyly avoided Damon or would only see him in Stefan’s or Father’s (or the servants’) company. He knew he followed her like a helpless lamb (to the slaughter). He knew it was ridiculous and obvious, yet he could not stop himself. He tried to touch her leg with his, under the table, at meals. She sat too far away and eluded that, yet made certain her mouth caressed each mouthful of food, or slowly withdrew her spoon or fork between her tightened lips. It drove Damon _mad_.

When she finished first and excused herself – which, most often, she did – she tilted her chin down demurely and averted her eyes. Yet her smile was deep and pleased when Damon hesitated to stand politely with Stefan and Father as she departed the table. He could not do so without exposing his arousal.

After several evenings in a row of this, Damon took to binding himself tightly beneath his breeches before dinner to lessen the inevitable bulge. He tried to cover what he could with a napkin at his waist, feeling his face go hot and desperately hoping neither Stefan nor Father noticed.

* * *

Damon has been close to asking Stefan questions – questions to which he thought he knew the answers, but now suspects he doesn’t.

Pride and the sick feeling of being colossally duped by Katherine stop him.

* * *

He remembers more than Stefan. Of that Damon is sure (isn’t he?). Because, if Stefan put it all together, if he remembers everything, surely he would have mentioned a number of occasions by now – at least once.

The first night that Katherine invited Damon in to her room with Stefan already there, half naked in her bed – if Stefan remembered that night, he’d never said anything.

It was, among a few other things, one of the reasons Damon could not (quite) kill his brother. He doesn’t know if Stefan knows everything – or if he himself does, either.

The idea of asking is just too humiliating. Which enrages him.

But the chance to ask, and to finally find out, is always possible, as long as Stefan is alive.

* * *

Maybe Stefan remembered everything and just didn’t want to say so. But since when would Stefan skip an opportunity to criticize Katherine for her moral bankruptcy and depravity?

Damon sometimes thinks about it (can’t get it out of his mind). Sick jealousy combined with the eroticism of watching her make love with Stefan. Burning pride mixed with competitiveness when he knew Stefan watched him make love (better… _right?_ his mind whispered) to Katherine. A bizarre, tender love for Stefan – who looked so hurt at those times – grew in Damon: He had been in those shoes. Anger at Katherine simmered in him for doing that to Stefan (to both of them), even as Damon was swept along by her passion for them both, unable to stop the momentum.

When Damon kissed Stefan half on the mouth, not quite as Katherine demanded, cool hate ( _how can she want him, too? why am I not enough?_ ) and seething love ( _I’ll do whatever she wants, but this can’t possibly end well_ ) for both Katherine and Stefan, warred in him.

The nonchalant decadence of caressing both of them… The fear when Stefan‘s glassy eyes gave way to a dawning recognition. Stefan stumbling away across the room from them, trying to escape before Katherine blocked the door and compelled him… The smug satisfaction of watching her compel Stefan to calm his disgust with them and himself.

Now, present day, Damon thought about it, remembered it, sometimes dreamed about it – and never spoke of it with Stefan. What was the point, without Katherine to verify anything? As if she would. As if _anything_ she said could be believed now, anyway.

Damon burned when he thought of it, uncertain if he burned with shame, arousal, or longing. If he were honest with himself (why should he be? yet he couldn't help it), it was a combination of all three. Defiantly, on the heels of that thought, Damon rejected shame.

In the twentieth century, Damon picked up couples (or let them pick him up). Shocking as the Roaring Twenties had been, the Jazz Age had had nothing on the desperation of the Great Depression. People were far more amenable to immorality when economics forced them to be. And everyone broke the law during Prohibition, anyway.

It was not the same. Not by a long shot. Damon wasn’t sure if that was because he felt nothing for these couples, or because they felt nothing for him.

He’d never had the nerve, on the few occasions over the last century and a half, when he wasn’t engaged in giving Stefan a lifetime of misery, to suggest to Stefan that they pick up a woman together. Sort of try it again.

Stefan wouldn’t trust him, anyway. They hadn’t gotten it right the first time – why would it be any different now?

Still, sometimes Damon wondered: if he and Stefan did it today, with another woman ( _Elena_ , his mind whispered), would it be the same? Could it? That brief paradise before all was lost and ruined?

No, no, surely not.

(What if it was? Would that mean that it had been so sweet and beautiful, a hundred and forty five years ago, because of... Stefan, not Katherine?)

* * *

Some nights Katherine bound Damon with her corset strings. Other nights, she used her long gloves or scarves to tie him to the head of the bed. Sometimes she blindfolded him with them. Occasionally – his face felt feverishly hot when he thought of it later, during the day – she bound his organs themselves. It was faintly embarrassing (though no more so than if he were caught bound to the bed and naked...) and felt strange to have his cock and balls trussed up like a bird for roasting. But they became so much more _sensitive_. He lasted longer, and his pleasure was likewise intensified. Damon simultaneously wondered where Katherine had learned such things and tried to erase the fact that she had.

If he could remember all this so clearly, not bits and pieces appearing out of the fog over a hundred and forty odd years, but whole swathes of sensual experiences, then he must not have been compelled... right?

After countless nights of this sweet torture – of Katherine commanding (but not compelling) him that he should not release – they both found that she could handle Damon’s organ, alternating rough pleasure with sweet (hands, then heavenly mouth), for three quarters of an hour without him spurting helplessly. He kept an iron grip on himself inside, held back, no matter how often she brought him to the edge of erupting. Until it almost hurt _not_ to.

For Katherine, he suffered this exquisite pleasure-pain endlessly, as long as he could last. Nearly an hour, by the very first time she… Then, and only then, she finally initiated him in the more natural way: she lifted her voluminous petticoats to straddle him and sank softly and oh-so-slowly down on him, hot and tight, her dark gaze locked to his.

This was, and wasn’t, completely new to Damon. Wasn’t, in that he’d been taken this way by one of the whores he’d been with. Was, in that he knew and cared deeply for (loved, he thought) the woman doing it now.

As he had at the beginning, when she’d first begun playing with him, Damon convulsed helplessly when she first sank down on him to the hilt, his pleasure fighting its way through his attempt at control. He spurted, biting his lips, hips jerking under her, gasps and moans stifled in his throat (she had commanded that he make no noise). She slapped him, hard. He barely felt it, his cock still jerking inside her.

“Please unbind me,” Damon whispered hoarsely, faint with the fog of love and desire. “I want to – I _need_ to – touch you. Please!” His arms strained against their bonds, the lines of corset string cutting into them, his cock-spasms weakening.

“Shhh,” Katherine whispered, sitting stock still on him, a knowing expression on her face. “Wait.”

She squeezed him tightly then, from inside herself, and he gasped and began to harden anew. (God, he’d been so young.) She began a slow rhythm, rocking on him, riding him. His inevitable, volcanic rise of pleasure began again until he was poised at the edge, ready to boil over.

Katherine urged him in seductive whispers: _not yet, not yet, hold on, hold on_. He did, desperately, for a long time. It took all his concentration. Was nearly unendurable, the pleasure warring with his tight rein on himself.

Then, for the very first time, it was Katherine who finally gasped and moaned and shuddered on Damon’s cock, biting her lip. His eyes, squeezed tightly shut with the effort expended trying not to spurt, opened. He watched (and felt) as she rocked and ground down on him, her expression changing as if she were about to sob... and then into beatific bliss.

He fell harder in love with her, then… though it hardly seemed possible to do so. Katherine had never looked so ravishingly beautiful, even in all those hours of pleasuring him – he had never seen her lose control, never seen her surrender to _her own_ pleasure. He felt indescribably special, that she chose him, using him, using his _body_ , to do so, to surrender to _abandon_.

She had not told Damon that he could release. But her pleasure overtook them both. It burst forth as he shuddered under her. Her fierce kisses and hips grinding him, hard, into the bed left Damon in no doubt that it was all right to let go and come – then, only then, only after Katherine had _her_ pleasure.

It set a tone.

Long afterward (decades), Damon realized that was probably what Katherine had been doing all along: schooling him to hold himself back until her slow train of pleasure, far more specific and elusive than his, arrived. Another man might have been offended. Damon was instead thrilled that he mattered enough to Katherine to _warrant_ training. He would have done it willingly, had she been open and not secretive about it. But he didn’t question the means when her ends left him drunker on pleasure and love than he had ever been on spirits.

It wasn’t until many years later that he understood how gratifying it was – by applying pleasure surgically, _precisely_ , and repeatedly – to force a lover to beg.

How gratifying his begging must have been for Katherine to hear.

* * *

Cynicism was not something Damon expected to gain from military service. He brought it back with him nevertheless. He didn’t hide it from Father. But then, Father didn’t hide his disdain.

The sickening hypocrisy of people around him – of Father, his friends, the Gilberts, the Lockwoods, the founding families – made Damon feel justified about his secret evening rendezvous with Miss Katherine.

_Everyone says one thing and does another_ , he decided. He could play that game, too. _Unlike them,_ Damon thought, _I do it for love, and only for love._

* * *

Hand raised to knock softly at her door, he suddenly heard something and stops. Listening, holding his breath to hear better, he heard Stefan’s soft voice and her hushed replies. The sound of silk sliding against cotton was audible, then faint sounds of moist lips touching, kissing, and more frenzied movements.

He knew (had known all along, his mind whispered) about her and Stefan. This is not the first time he has overheard them.

Every time, his heart sank into a hot pit of jealousy and a burning heat rose to his cheeks.

What he heard was more intimate than what he’s heard in the past. He knew about Stefan – but – he had thought Katherine only made love with him, Damon. Stefan was still gentlemanly, even behind closed doors, almost innocent. Stefan still believed in chivalry and all that balderdash.

Damon was beyond that. He was never a gentleman with Katherine behind closed doors – at least, not after the first few minutes, after her preliminaries let him know how far things would go with her this time.

But then, Katherine was no lady behind closed doors, either. Nor would Damon have wanted her to be. _Make hay while the sun shines_ , he’d thought at the time. _You never know when life might suddenly end. Whether enemy or friendly fire, you’ll still be dead._

Hearing Stefan be far more – or, rather, far less – than a gentleman behind closed doors with Katherine, envy was a surprisingly keen pain in Damon’s chest and gut.

Damon stepped slowly back from the door, lowering his arm. He would not knock now. He set his jaw. Let Stefan have at it. Katherine would call for Damon tomorrow night (he hoped, he desperately hoped). He was about to leave and planned to do so quietly (Katherine has surprisingly sharp hearing). He planned to go back to his own room ( _and touch myself_ ) ( _and think of them_ ) ( _no, no_ ).

He took another step back and – damn – the floor creaked under his foot. He turned, hoping to make a swift retreat, only to hear the door open softly behind him. Katherine was remarkably fast when she wanted to be, Damon had learned – never in front of others, only alone with he and Stefan.

“Damon,” she said quietly behind him.

He turned and saw her, cheeks flushed, hair disheveled, still mostly dressed. He was once again struck by her dark beauty. She held her door open wide, not hiding the fact that Stefan sat on her bed, shirtless, suspenders pooled around his hips, hair mussed. Stefan looked at Damon for a moment, and then looked away.

“It’s nothing,” Damon said stiffly. “I merely came to wish you a good night, Miss Katherine.”

“Then come in and do so,” she whispered. Her grasp of his forearm was warm and insistent, the pull on his arm tenacious.

Her touch pulled the pain up from the pit of his stomach and transformed it into a flutter to his chest. How she did this to him, again and again, Damon had no idea. But she could do it to him for an eternity and he’d never tire of it. In the back of his mind, he wondered if the jealousy and envy, the torment of knowing he had only half of her heart, was worth the butterflies. But the possibilities in Katherine’s enigmatic smile and her dark eyes quelled it.

He let her pull him over the threshold and shut the door behind him.

That night, she tied them both to different bedposts across from each other. Before she had even secured him, arms tightly bound behind his back around the bedpost, Damon was rock hard. Stefan’s pants, like his own, were open, but Stefan was not similarly aroused, as far as Damon could tell. He noted this with amusement. It certainly seemed true to their natures – one impetuous, one reserved; one who never thought, one who thought too much.

Katherine forced each of them to watch as she made love to the other in turn. She took her time, tormenting Damon by making him watch her love Stefan, slowly and thoroughly. She kissed Stefan and he cautiously kissed her back, eyeing Damon out of his peripheral vision. She noticed that and cradled his face. her hands like blinders, not letting him look at anything but her, climbing onto his lap. She whispered to Stefan. Damon couldn’t quite make it out.

Soon Stefan’s stiff posture relaxed against the bedpost. He sighed deeply into Katherine’s mouth. She gently pinched Stefan’s nipples. Damon’s hardened in sympathy – or something, he wasn’t quite sure what. Her mouth slid down to Stefan’s chest and she kissed his muscles and then gently sucked his nipples.

Stefan threw his head back as Katherine’s skirt slid off his lap and revealed his engorged organ. Damon’s cock beat like a second heart as he watched; there was a terrible burning in his stomach. When Katherine slid down and opened Stefan’s pants wider, Damon strained against his bondage. When her mouth slid over Stefan’s cock, Damon couldn’t stand it, and jerked his body forward to try to break free. The whole, heavy bed lurched slightly with his momentum. Stefan’s glistening organ slid from her red, red lips.

“Stop that,” Katherine said, arching an eyebrow. “You’ll get your turn.” Her eyes dropped to Damon’s cock: flushed, stiff, oozing. “It doesn’t look like you don’t like it.”

Stefan looked away from both of them. His cock never wavered, either.

Having no control over what his loins thought versus the burn in his stomach, the ache in his chest, Damon was utterly humiliated. _Of course I’m aroused_ , he wanted to say; _I would be this aroused if a pair of total strangers did this not five feet from me_. But he said none of that.

“Please, no more,” he pleaded with Katherine. “I understand: you love him too. If this is what you want, then, fine, I will share you. But please – don’t make me watch.”

She crawled over to him on the bed like a cat.

“I don’t want you to just watch,” she murmured into his hair, caressing his chest. His cock throbbed painfully. “I want you to enjoy it.”

“I can’t,” Damon declared, though he knew this was most likely not true.

“I think you can,” Katherine said into his lips and kissed him deeply.

Her hand slid down to squeeze and stroke him, and he hissed out a breath between clenched teeth as she moved her mouth down to his neck for some surprisingly sharp nips. He watched her head move down, voluminous curls cascading across his lap. Damon knew what she was about to do and couldn’t help it: he began to tremble.

He glanced up, and Stefan watched Katherine suck gently on his nipple. His face was haunted and hungry; his cock shivered rhythmically (Damon realized it was to the beat of Stefan’s heart). He and Stefan’s eyes met.

Damon shook his head once, twice, trying to say many things: _I can’t stand it, either_ and _Please don’t watch, and I won’t watch when she does it to you_ and _I love her too_ and _I’ve known all along about you two, it’s all right, Brother._

He felt as Katherine’s hair brushed his chest and looked down. Katherine gathered her hair up and moved it to one side, exposing her face, neck, and Damon’s cock, giving Stefan a perfect view.

Stefan’s sad, defeated eyes drifted up to Damon’s and his shoulder moved subtly as he sagged against his bedpost. He shook his head, too, as if to say, _I’m sorry – I can’t help it_.

Then his eyes locked onto Katherine sliding her mouth tightly over Damon’s cock, and Damon groaned through clenched teeth and knew he would not be able to hold out very long if she were determined.

He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see Stefan watching. Soon he was bucking up into her talented mouth. She held Damon down by his thighs and continued.

He opened his eyes and Stefan’s gaze was on them, just as Katherine did something different and excruciatingly pleasurable with her tongue. Damon lurched with the pleasure, now inevitable. As it pumped up out of him like a wave cresting, he looked away from Stefan, anywhere but Stefan, feeling helpless, out of control, and a strange combination of resentful (of Katherine doing this to him, to _them_ ), ashamed (of his loss of control), and proud ( _see that?!_ ).

She finished swallowing, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then held Damon’s face and kissed him deeply. His own bitter taste was still on her tongue. Damon fought to tear his mouth from hers, but only because Stefan still watched.

Katherine wouldn’t let him move his face away, kissing him slowly. The pleasure seeped through Damon languorously and he gave up, surrendered to it… and to her... and to this very, very strange situation.

She finished kissing him and whispered, “Beautiful. Now you watch.”

Damon’s breath hitched as she crawled across to Stefan in her corset and petticoats.

Stefan’s cock – Damon tried not to look at it, but he couldn’t help it – was still firm. He couldn’t recall if he’d ever seen it in it’s full glory before. Of course he’d seen it many times at the swimming hole or when they were smaller and Mother bathed them together in the washtub. But this was different. Stefan was grown now.

Katherine kissed Stefan and stroked his organ with one hand. Damon couldn’t help but notice: Stefan’s was thicker at the base... about the same length, he thought, maybe a bit shorter than his own. What did that mean? Damon had no idea, really.

He watched Katherine gather her hair to one side and then put her mouth on Stefan’s cock. His own cock throbbed back to fully hard.

Damon glanced at Stefan’s face, but Stefan had closed his eyes tightly.

Katherine sucked for a very long time, much longer than she sucked Damon. Which, in distress, Damon thought might be the point. After a while she stopped sucking, sat up, grabbed Stefan by the collar and shook him.

“Stop fighting and let go,” she said sweetly. But then her voice steeled. “Or I’ll _make you_.”

Stefan glared at her a moment, but she didn’t seem to compel him. He turned his head away as Katherine bent back down. He still hadn’t released after a few moments, and Katherine got impatient.

“This isn’t supposed to be so much work for me,” she threatened. “It’s supposed to be fun – for all of us.” She yanked Stefan’s breeches down to his knees and then cupped his balls.

“I warned you,” she said quietly before continuing. She bent her head down again, taking Stefan deep into her mouth, into her throat.

While she moved her mouth up and down on him, the hand she had cupping Stefan’s balls, Damon saw, slid farther between Stefan’s thighs and buttocks until her wrist was under his balls.

Stefan’s hips jerked and he squirmed, legs splaying wider, then. Katherine held his near leg still as she continued with her mouth, faster, tighter, _faster_. Whatever she did with her other hand, Stefan still squirmed on it, unable to get away like the lines of his body showed he wanted to do.

Damon felt heat swell his throat and behind his eyes, angry on Stefan’s behalf, even as he realized he was as hard as a rock and throbbing sympathetically again. He was angry for both of them – for Stefan going through whatever it was that Katherine did to him; for himself for icing the cake as witness to Stefan’s humiliation.

Still Damon got harder by the second, aroused by this mysterious sexual conflict between Stefan and Katherine. He shouldn’t have been, but he was. That made him angry too, and a shame he had no longer believed he could feel burned his cheeks.

Stefan gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and began to convulse.

Katherine stopped using her mouth and sat back to admire her handiwork, watching how high Stefan’s spurts went before falling back onto his clothes and the sheets. With each convulsion, Stefan hissed long-held breath out between his teeth.

When he stopped spurting, panting, his head hanging, Katherine pulled her hand out from under and between Stefan’s buttocks and wiped it on his pants.

She grabbed Stefan by the chin. “Don’t defy me like that again, Stefan,” she warned him.

His face now impassive, Stefan just met her gaze until she turned and focused on Damon who was, of course, ready to go again, anger half-forgotten from _need_.

“The pleasure is all mine,” she said, smiling.

Damon shivered, uncertain what she had done to Stefan. His posture said that he was embarrassed, humiliated, defeated. Damon didn’t want to be so aroused by this; it was wrong, he felt instinctively, though Stefan never protested, never fought to break free.

But Damon couldn’t help it; his loins thought differently than his brain (if they thought at all). He was rock hard and ready for her after she detached her petticoats and climbed onto his lap.

When it came to Katherine, Damon knew he was weaker than Stefan. He wouldn’t have bothered to resist; why resist pleasure, especially at her hands? Yet somehow Damon knew it was not the pleasure Stefan resisted but the control Katherine took of his body and its responses.

Despite all that, she brought such blinding pleasure to Damon that he knew he was powerless to resist her.

“You won’t defy me like that, will you?” Katherine purred, poised to sink down on him.

Damon wordlessly shook his head, trying to forget Stefan’s humiliation and his own guilty arousal at the scene.

Katherine obliged his momentary need to obliterate all else. She kissed him roughly as she sank down on him, hot and tight and incredibly wet. Damon sighed into her mouth and forgot everything, breathing in Katherine, Katherine, Katherine. He tasted her, felt her all over his body, touching him in ways no one had ever touched him, urging him slowly to a second climax he didn’t bother trying to prolong or postpone.

She stayed on him after he stopped jerking and thrusting up at her, crushing his face to the tops of her breasts, just above her corset. Damon, sweating, still panting, felt himself shrink and slide out of her. He pressed his lips repeatedly to the creamy, soft flesh of her decolletage, bestowing small kisses.

“That’s better,” she murmured. She got off his lap and it was only then that Damon unwillingly remembered Stefan was still in the room with him, because there he was.

Stefan clearly tried to remain calm and composed. Damon doubted that Katherine saw it. He saw it because Stefan was his brother and they had been everything to each other since Mother died. With Katherine now with both of them, they couldn’t be everything to each other anymore. Still, nothing could stop Damon from wanting to protect Stefan.

“Katherine,” Damon began hesitantly.

She was at the wash basin. She wiped her inner thighs with a wrung out wash cloth, and looked up. “Yes?”

“Please... untie Stefan. I’ll stay, all night, tied up if you want, or not – I won’t go anywhere. But,” Damon searched her face, “Please just untie him, all right, Katherine? He’s... he’s uncomfortable, he, he’s not – not quite like me. Us.”

She gave Damon a thoroughly innocent stare, which changed into a rather withering expression as his eyes beseeched her. Finally her expression became a sullen pout.

“Fine,” she muttered, exasperation in her tone.

She crossed the room to Stefan’s bedpost, and began untying and unknotting the corset strings binding him to the bedpost. When they were loose enough, she dropped them and went back to washing up.

Stefan slowly wriggled out of the loose strings, rolling his shoulders, rubbing the red areas on his forearms where the corset strings had left marks.

Watching Stefan free himself, Damon remembered the stretch of his arms behind him, wrapped around the bedpost the same way. He would feel it tomorrow. Stefan stood up, pulled on his pants, grabbed his shirt, and Damon expected him to beat a hasty retreat.

Instead, he walked over to Katherine. She attempted a nonchalant expression, but Damon sensed an edge of fear in her.

“I’m untying Damon and we’re leaving your room now,” Stefan said, looking down into her face from his height as he put on his shirt. His tone was calm and authoritative.

“No, Stefan, you don’t have to–” Damon began, half-afraid it would rile Katherine up.

“That’s fine,” Katherine interrupted coolly, looking up into Stefan’s face. “I’m done with you both. For now.”

Damon was strangely almost as relieved as he was disappointed. He never knew quite what he was in for with Katherine. This, tonight, he had had no idea was going to happen… until it happened. Another evening of pleasure and passion... and pain, and strangeness... and the sweet oblivion of release.

Stefan came to Damon and began untying the corset strings binding him to the bedpost. When they were loose enough for Damon to work himself free, Stefan picked up Damon’s pants and shirt and waited for Damon to stand up from the bed.

When Damon finally stood up, he felt a rush of blood to his head. He had to sit on the bed to put his pants on. He didn’t bother putting his shirt on, merely crossed the room to where Katherine sat at her vanity table.

“Good night, Miss Katherine,” he said formally, and bent down to kiss her cheek.

She threw an arm up around his neck and pulled his ear to her mouth.

“I need you both,” she whispered, a plaintive edge to her voice. Sometimes she seemed like a love-starved orphan.

Damon put his arms around her for a quick hug. “I know,” he murmured. “Stefan will... come around. Just don’t rush him. He’ll come around.”

He released her and stood up, and she nodded up at him. She turned to look at Stefan, who watched their exchange silently.

“Good night, Stefan,” Katherine said softly. Her tone was almost apologetic, though not quite.

He and Stefan left her room. Damon didn’t know quite what to say. At Stefan’s bedroom door, Stefan didn’t stop. He kept walking, to the servants’ staircase, down to the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Damon whispered fiercely, not wanting to raise Father’s attention.

“Outside,” Stefan replied, and kept walking.

Damon followed him. In the gazebo, Stefan sat down, posture slouched. Damon’s heart went out to him. He sat next to Stefan and threw an arm around Stefan’s shoulders.

“She means well, Stefan.”

“Does she?”

Damon was taken aback by the response, and groped for words. “Yes, well, I know she has a strange way of showing it sometimes. She’s been traveling in Europe; she’s… acquired some… tastes. But, yes, I think she does mean well.”

“What did she say when you kissed her cheek?”

Damon hesitated. “She said she needs us. Both of us.”

“For what, Damon? To play games with?” Stefan’s gaze was somber in the dappled moonlight.

“I don’t know, brother,” Damon sighed.

Stefan sighed too. “I love her, Damon. I do. But... I can’t take this.”

“I can take her off your hands,” Damon said slyly, trying for humor. He got one of Stefan’s elbows to his ribs. “Ouch.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Stefan smiled.

“I know.”

“But... how far does she mean to take this? We can’t... we can’t all three be together like this,” Stefan murmured. “It’s not... right.”

“None of this is right,” Damon pointed out quietly.

Stefan met his gaze somberly. “Some of it is. Some of it isn’t.”

Damon shook his head and shrugged. “She said, no rules, didn’t she? Although it’s a bit more like _her_ rules, than it is ‘no rules’.”

“And then what? We live here. We can’t have the whole town talking.”

Damon didn’t say what he thought, which was: _Who cares what they think? We don’t have to live here. We can go anywhere._

He squeezed Stefan’s shoulder. “I’m going up to bed. Don’t be too long,” he added, concerned.

“I won’t,” Stefan said quietly. “I’ll be up shortly.”

The next night Damon came to Katherine’s room early. He’d seen her do it a few times already, with other people. A little secret she gave him glimpses of, but never explained. And he never asked. Now he did.

“You need to make him forget,” he told her.

* * *

One night, not long before the vampire round-up and the end of their lives as they knew them, Father had to go to Richmond on business for some Founding Family horseshit that Damon now wished he’d paid a bit more attention to, because it probably had tentacles reaching down through time to the present.

But then, how could he have? Once things with Katherine blossomed into the passion that defined his nights, with or without her, Damon passed his days in a daze. He alternated between exhaustion from lack of sleep the night before (either with Katherine, or listening to Stefan with her, or spying on them) and a bouncy spring in his morning step for the upcoming day’s activities (the better to get them over with and bring on the night, when Katherine’s proper and demure behavior metamorphosed into the untamed, insatiable creature she really was).

Looking back with the wisdom of a hundred and forty five years behind him, Damon could understand why Katherine decided to take them both. He and Stefan were in the prime of their youth at the time. No _one_ man would have been able to handle her (satisfy her). No one _human_ man, anyway.

If the three of them had had the estate to themselves – no Founding Families dictating morality, and no town folk to talk behind her back or threaten her security – he and Stefan might well have had difficulty keeping up with Katherine when she fully unleashed herself, youth or no youth.

Of course, Damon hadn’t known that at the time. At the time, he was in the fog of love, the haze of sex, as hopelessly addicted to her as proper ladies were to laudanum. He was addicted to pleasing her, to wanting to make her happy, to making her buck and tremble in his arms, to bringing her to full pleasure – and to the feeling he got from it: that he had scaled the highest peak, sampled the rarefied air up there, yet again.

Every day Damon rose from bed wanting to do it again. Every day he wished that he was the only one who did it for her and knew that he was not. Every day he loved and hated the other man, his brother Stefan, for simply being the other man.

He was too young (too human), then, to have known that only a menage a trois would work for Katherine – at least as far as humans were concerned. Probably only another vampire could have fully satisfied her. When consorting with humans, Katherine would probably have needed at least two, much the way Damon now preferred to drink from sorority girls in twos and threes.

_No rules_ , after all. It was the only thing that made Damon slightly pity her. Katherine was obsessed with flouting “the rules.” Damon guessed “the rules” had hurt her deeply some time before… something she was not about to allow to happen ever again.

The three of them, Damon, Katherine, and Stefan, had been born in repressive eras and cultures – Katherine most of all. What little she’d mentioned of her previous life – and the unspoken majority he had sensed – led Damon to believe that she had been harshly punished for behaving like... well, like a man. Vampire life must have been very attractive to her human self, whoever and wherever that had been.

In truth Katherine was probably smart and shrewd (and manipulative) enough to have been another Cleopatra or Catherine the Great, had she been born to the right people, in the right times, in the right blood lines.

When he and Stefan had met her, she had insulated herself with wealth: the best protection from being punished for being yourself. Eccentricities of the wealthy, ruling class are always tolerated and excused by society where the same behavior among poor folk would earn them at the very least public scorn and humiliation in the stocks or at the whipping post – and at worst, death by beating, starvation, and/or consumption in prison for lewd and lascivious acts.

Certainly, had it become known to the town folk and Founding Families just what Damon, Katherine and Stefan were doing behind closed doors, they would all three have been candidates for the stocks – Katherine more than Damon and Stefan together. She was not from a Founding Family. And she was a woman. Either he or Stefan could have carried on with two sisters and never suffered the same punishment Katherine – or the sisters – would have.

* * *

How had Damon never noticed the velvety softness of the skin of his own hard cock? Why had it taken holding and stroking ( _sucking_ , his mind whispered) Stefan’s to notice little things he’d never noticed about – himself – men – before? Or the way Stefan’s stomach muscles trembled under his cheek, the way his dark nipples hardened under his lips. _Does my stomach do the same_ , Damon had wondered, _when Katherine kisses her way down to take me in her mouth?_

Damon loved them both so very much sometimes – not merely physically loved them… but his heart swelled in his chest until it felt like it would burst with warmth and generosity for both Katherine and Stefan.

He still remembered the way that Stefan’s buttocks felt, flexing as he (they both) thrust into Katherine.

Damon and Katherine lay on their left sides, Stefan on his right, facing Katherine between them. Her left arm looped around Stefan’s neck; her right hand extended behind her, holding Damon’s hip. Her uppermost, right leg, was hitched over Stefan’s arm, spreading her legs wide.

Damon had instinctively reached for something to hold for leverage while he thrust shallowly into Katherine from behind, trying to get deeper (at her whispered urging). She was so very tight back there, even though he had greased himself thoroughly (and her) as instructed.

But with Katherine between them, the buttock he’d grabbed wasn’t hers, it was Stefan’s.

He felt every nuanced flex of Stefan’s hips, not just forward and back, but subtle side-to-side and circular movements, the kind that would rub hard against Katherine right there, just where she liked it best. Distracted, Damon raised his head and looked around Katherine at Stefan.

Stefan gazed at Katherine. The sweat on his brow, the set of his lips, the clench of his jaw all told Damon that Stefan read how well he was doing in Katherine’s expression, by Katherine’s pleasure.

Her voluminous hair was wild and in Damon’s face. He glanced at their reflection in the mirror over her vanity. Katherine’s eyes were closed, but occasionally squeezed shut tighter, and then relaxed. She moaned quietly. For the briefest of seconds, she bit her lip and her chin trembled as if she were about to cry; then her expression smoothed out, blissful.

All of this – this thrusting, and coordinating their movements to Katherine’s whispered instructions so that Stefan withdrew from as Damon pushed in and vice versa, and kissing and biting her neck, Damon holding himself tightly back inside despite how unbelievably constricted and hot she was back there (he wanted to let go, recklessly disobey her, spurt deep inside her, but he didn’t) – all this was _her_ idea, Katherine’s chosen tableau. She’d even picked the position and what, really, did either of the brothers know of this sort of thing to object?

But watching Stefan search Katherine’s expression so attentively, it suddenly struck Damon – like the proverbial ton of bricks – that Stefan wasn’t his rival. Stefan was as truly smitten by Katherine, was as deeply in love with her, as Damon himself was.

His heart softened in that moment. As he gripped Stefan’s moving hip, Damon realized that it wasn’t just that Stefan wanted Katherine for himself. It was that Stefan wanted to _make her happy_ , wanted to please her, wanted to do whatever she asked, even if it went against his own principles.

His little brother was utterly, completely in love with the dark goddess who’d come into their lives and now ruled their hearts and bodies – just as he, Damon, was. They were not rivals. They were _compatriots_.

Damon knows enough – now, as a vampire – to know that Stefan’s loving and lovemaking weren’t compelled. His fear of Katherine’s bites and drinking, his attack of nerves when waking amongst bloody sheets, his unwillingness to do the taboo – those were overcome by Katherine’s compulsion.

But compulsion didn’t change one’s personality. Everything else – the way Stefan passionately, carefully made love to her... the way his face watched hers, even in the midst of passion... the way Damon might just as well not have been there, for all the attention Stefan paid him – was pure Stefan.

It must be love ( _had_ to be) when you wanted the other person (people) to get whatever they wanted. Even if giving it to them (letting them have it) hurt you. Right?

Damon hadn’t wanted Katherine to love them both. He had wanted her to love himself alone. But even then, some part of him felt the one who deserved Katherine was Stefan, not himself. He knew he, himself, bristled at rules now. Soldiering had only exposed the horror of war and the hypocrisy of the Confederates – men like his father, whose approval Damon had given up seeking since it seemed reserved for only Stefan.

The hole in Damon’s heart ( _life_ , his mind whispered) was one he filled with Katherine at every possible opportunity. He had nothing to hold onto within himself. Stefan did. He had... honor. Dignity. Could resist Katherine which meant that, in many ways, despite being yougner, he was stronger than Damon.

Stefan always wanted to do the right thing, which Damon knew was not what they were doing – not least because one of them had to be compelled into it, let alone because two of the three participants were brothers.

Stefan had not yet been marred by the world. Damon now understood man’s age-old desire for a virginal bride – not for procreation, but to have something true and unspoiled and beautiful, when all around you the world was anything but. Damon loved Katherine, helplessly and with all of his body and soul, of which she had taken possession. It was both a crushing yoke and a liberation: Damon knew he would probably do anything Katherine wanted – rob a train like the James Gang, murder and feed on children (she’d already showed him how to feed).

That meant that Damon was no good for her. He would never tell Katherine when she should stop. He would never be the lover who cared so much that he would risk her wrath and rejection to draw lines that (shouldn’t) couldn’t be crossed because despite their appearance as barriers, they would keep Katherine connected to something real and meaningful. Damon was not yet betrothed to her (or anyone else – as if there were anyone else for him) but realized he himself was already incapable of all of that.

Stefan, though – Stefan could do it. Would do it. Whether Katherine liked it or not, Stefan would be the villain if being the villain was ultimately in her best interest.

Damon, on the other hand, biting his lip, driving into her harder and faster as Stefan picked up speed on the other side of her, and as Katherine moaned and whispered incoherently and shuddered between them – in that moment of clarity, Damon knew he could never be all that for her. He could be her plaything, her whipping boy, her slave, her puppet – gladly, willingly, selfishly: to fill his own hole. But he would never have the strength to put his foot down with Katherine. Not like Stefan would.

Damon drove into Katherine harder and faster, feeling Stefan’s hard, fast thrusts and grinding motions through the thin wall of flesh separating the respective orifices to which Katherine had assigned them. Damon dimly heard her whispers of _harder, faster, let go, give it to me, your essences_.

But he couldn’t stop watching Stefan’s face, intent on nothing and no one but Katherine. When Stefan closed his own eyes, grabbed Katherine by the hips, thrust deep and hard into her and started to shake – when Damon felt Katherine writhe between them, heard her involuntary moans, felt her rhythmically contracting, squeezing his organ hard, _so_ hard, as pleasure overwhelmed her –

Then, only then, did Damon close his own eyes and with one last hard, rough ram into Katherine’s tight backside, he let go of everything (all rational thought) and spilt his seed, trembling. Every jet that spurted out of him into her seemed drawn from his unknown core like some deep, hidden well... excruciatingly pleasurable, emptying him of everything as he and Stefan filled Katherine.

Damon shuddered behind her, one hand still on Stefan’s hip, feeling a strange mix of euphoria and melancholia, bursting with love and disquiet for them both, for all three of them.

This couldn’t possibly end well. What he knew of the world so far had taught Damon that. He knew that of the three of them, only one was strong enough to hold stalwart against encroaching reality. It was not Katherine, and it was definitely not himself.

And yet, and yet – love. It was all love, nothing else _but_ love. That made it – hopeful.

Catching his breath, feeling sweat cool on his body, briefly stroking Stefan’s hip as he softened and slipped out of Katherine, Damon kissed her neck and buried his face in all her wild, dark hair and sighed deeply. He couldn’t see or feel depravity in what they’d just done.

Oh, he knew how it looked. Knew what people would say. But those people would never see what he’d seen, would never feel what he felt. Love and pleasure and sensuality. Love was exhausting himself in service to his beloved Katherine. Because, sharing her, Damon wasn’t sure where he ranked. Guarded, he would never ask openly.

Yet Damon did this anyway because _she_ wanted it, because some part of Katherine _needed_ this, and Damon loved her that much. His own love, desire, and need to be needed, his hope for reciprocation from Katherine (and Stefan) were exposed (if only to himself). Giving this to her, to _them_ , bringing it about, let Damon know he was _necessary_ – as lover and older brother, a part of their equation, making it all right for his younger brother and flouting the rules the way Katherine wanted.

When two people had a great love between them, and they added a third – not as a rival for infidelity, but welcomed warmly, space made in their hearts and bed for that third person to live and love them back – that only expanded the love, didn’t it? Gave it room to mature and grow. Right?

Damon’s thoughts were impetuous, over-wrought, overwhelming. Yet he regretted nothing. He breathed deeply of the scent of Katherine’s hair, of her scalp and some spice or perfume among the strands, that started tears in his eyes He should never do this again with Katherine and Stefan. But he would do it again with them… endlessly.

Both possibilities, Damon thought, had about equal chances of occurring. Whichever one came about, it would be all right. Whichever it turned out to be, doing this, the three of them – him, Katherine, and Stefan, making love together – couldn’t be bad or evil. It just _couldn’t_. It was _love_. Tangled, thorny, brotherly, deeply passionate, pleasurable love.

Katherine’s “no rules” had taken them down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, and back out of it strangely innocent and pure as only love could be – because it _was_ , it was one rule, it was the _only_ rule: love. As a verb, as a noun. Just love.

Damon could do that, he knew in that moment. He could set things aside, could see the picture because he had taken himself out of the frame. Could love Stefan as a brother (and yet as a lover, Katherine the bridge and the summit to which they both aspired). Could desire them both sensually, even if he hadn’t already seen them coupling when Katherine tied Damon to the bed and made him watch.

Because he’d seen that look on Stefan’s face, the tender focus on Katherine’s desire and pleasure. It was a mirror of his own.

Damon remembered thinking (feeling) this way, at the time, like it was yesterday. The warmth and comfort of the scent of Stefan in bed with he and Katherine, a scent he’d known nightly for a few years after Mother died because Stefan couldn’t sleep alone no matter what Father said, and the nurse didn’t make him... their panting gasps as they caught their breath, Katherine’s perfumed hair and smooth skin, the musk and muscle of his and Stefan’s bodies, the ferny scent of their spilled seed and her wet sex, commingled.

This memory was not foggy or in bits of pieces, but entire, crystal clear – razor sharp. He could close his eyes and _be_ there: touch her skin, smell the three of them, feel Stefan and Katherine’s ribs expand and contract as they breathed hard in his arms, the cool wafts of their breath across his damp sweat raising goosebumps on his own skin.

He’d felt sleepy, tired, in a good way. He’d closed his eyes and drowsed. He had figured it out, knew what he had to do: He had to love himself, and Stefan, and the rest of the world, as much as he loved Katherine. The paradox was that love wasn’t finite, like he’d thought. Given this sweet, secret, taboo, Damon’s love for Stefan, stronger than his jealousy, expanded outward to the rest of the world… even to the petty hypocrisies of the poor old fools like Father around them, who would judge them so harshly if they knew.

With love like this, the three of them stood a chance together in the world. They could go anywhere. Do anything. (Be anyone.) Katherine would love them both equally, once unfettered and free to do so.

So Damon had thought.

(God, what a fool he’d been.)

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta-ed. All mistakes are mine alone. If interested in beta-ing, leave a comment. My fen friends are into other fandoms.
> 
> Originally began this fic during the S3 mid-season hiatus. Hurt/jealous/angsty almost-noble Damon presses a lot of my buttons.


End file.
